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Revised wind credit expands welfare possibilities

“In 24 hours the heavily subsidized wind industry has gone from the verge of collapse to a modern-day Gold Rush. H.R. 8 seems to create a perverse incentive to rush production of additional facilities even when there may not be adequate demand for wind, biomass, or geothermal energy,” Issa told The Hill in a statement.

“The House and the Senate agreed Tuesday to extend a 2.2 cent per kilowatt-hour credit for wind power production through this year as part of the “fiscal cliff” deal. It also changed the incentive to let wind projects earn the credit if under construction — rather than in service — by the end of the year.” [The Hill]

2 thoughts on “Revised wind credit expands welfare possibilities”

The large amount of wind power in Texas is a major factor in the difficulty in attracting new baseload power plants. Wind power gets priority on the grid, so the reliable plants (mostly natural gas, sometimes coal) have to power up and down to accomodate the erratic wind power. This is like driving your car in the city as opposed to on the highway: worse fuel economy (higher carbon dioxide emissions for the climatists) and higher maintenance and operational costs. If the reliable plants shut down when they’re under contract to the grid, they have to pay a penalty. But wind farms are exempted from this very reasonable requirement. So the wind farms wreak massive havoc on the grid and make other plants pay the cost. Just one of many, many reason why massive taxpayer subsidies to wind farms are a very bad idea.